The Devil's Favorite Sons
by hauntedhouses
Summary: Prohibition / Jazz Age AU. Mello runs a speakeasy and Matt is a jazz singer under Rod Ross' control. There's plenty to drink but Mello will never be sated. Mello's a drunk and trying to hide it, Matt's slaving for labor and can't get away. Rod Ross is the kingpin and there might not be anywhere to go. Is this the American dream or the American nightmare?


**I.**

There was one way to make it in this world, and Mello hadn't figured it out yet.

It was something formulaic- something precise- but he was still working on that and he would keep going, too. The equation right then consisted of something dark and dirty and garnished with festive colors. He found his success on a filthy side street where lights bathed the entrance in warmth and armed men watched the back. A gaudy line of cars was parked outside and when the night was done patrons would stagger into them once more, champagne splashing the street like loose raindrops. You could get fucked and drive if you wanted to. But if you wanted to drink you had to do it here. And that was the thing: everybody wanted to drink.

Mello glided through the hot room, coattails drifting behind him through plumes of smoke and constellations of dust that spin in the club lights. His people were on the other side of the room- and he stopped that train of thought before he could even start it, corrected it, because this whole place was full of his people. But these ones were his in particular: Rod Ross and a pale, pretty boy who was his in an entirely different way. Rod chewed on a fat cigar, eyes predatorily encircling the club. He was still but ready to strike, too unlike Mello, who was always on the move. And Matt was isolated behind his cigarette, hair falling over his eyes and shoulders buried in swaths of blue velvet. Matt stared at the floor and Mello stared at Matt until Rod forced him to break his eye contact.

"Mello," Rod grunted, words tight behind his teeth. Smoke wafted around his face- his smoke, Matt's smoke, and Mello watched their features blur to mirage. "Keep up the good work and you get to keep this one for a while."

This one- in reference to Matt. As far as dehumanizing titles went better this one than anything else. This one- this one in particular. It was reverent in its way. There was a certain singularity implied. "Good work?" Mello asked lazily, sticking a finger into Matt's drink. The pink elixir was bright and toxic, fat clusters of fruit sitting bloated on the bottom. As he swirled his finger they rose to the top once more only to drunkenly float back down. He licked the droplets as they rolled down his palm.

"Great work, you bimbo," Rod replied, gaze catching on the woman who'd taken Matt's place on the stage. Calling her a woman was a generosity but he respected her at least, knowing where she'd come from. It was hardly a favor getting an old friend involved with Rod's gang, but at least Linda wouldn't have to do anything too unscrupulous. That is- if she performed well. And with her shivering voice, the goosebumps on her skin visible in the dirty white light, the fraying in her slinky silver dress… well, she wouldn't have to do anything unscrupulous yet. For now she would sing. The rest could come after the show. "You don't need me to tell you that."

"When are you going to move him along?" Mello asked, casting the redhead a cursory glance that was not returned. "We need him here, you know. People expect the best."

Rod chuckled, snatching a whiskey off a passing tray. "You saying you're the best?"

"Yes. You saying you disagree?"

The man laughed louder, rolling up the sleeves of his pinstripe suit. Mihael could see the sweat gathered there- he imagined it moving like a plague, transferring from Rod's skin to Linda's in the back of an open-topped Model T. He imagined he knew what it was like to wear someone's scent like a skinned carcass. "Not at all, Mello. I'm glad I let you run this location. Keep at it is all I'm saying. Heard some goons are coming in from San Francisco trying to expand their territory."

Mello smiled then, a big, nasty grin. "They won't make it back to San Francisco."

"Until then, have a drink," Rod murmured. Matt took a long drag on his cigarette and tilted his head up to exhale. In the club's heavy humidity- the oppressive weather of human sweat- it didn't drift away, loose and gentle like it sometimes did. It hung over them like an omen.

Coyly, Mello plucked the glass from Matt's hands, swirling the pink liquid around in his mouth. It was stronger than it looked- all this panther piss was, all this homemade shit. The difference in this place was that it was all spiced up, pretty poison that burned like rubbing alcohol on the way down. He wouldn't have it any other way.

"That's not a drink," Rod snorted, snagging another whiskey. He shoved it roughly into Mello's hands. "Are you a man or a cake-eater?"

"I have business to do, Rod," Mello said dismissively, with a wave of his hand. His cufflinks glittered in the lamps, spots of light reflecting and joining the freckles on Matt's hands. "I'm a businessman."

He talked, that was part of the formula. He laughed and he joked and he danced because he wasn't good at too many things but he was excellent at acting and that was the only skill he really needed. That was how Rod found him after all. With cars came car wrecks and Mello wasn't the only kid on the street who needed to earn a pretty penny. He was the street performer and Near was the waif stealing wallets in the back. He hadn't seen the kid in years. He didn't want to. Things were too different now- too good for the cumbersome weight of memories. He shed that weight like the jacket and shirt as he strode down the hallway to Matt's dressing room- as the lights went off one by one, as the drinks were left to get sticky on the floor. The pants were still on- deep crimson pinstripe pants- because Matt was the act but Mello was the actor. It was time to put on a show. Brashly, he opened the door.

Matt sat on a plush red couch, an ostentatious bit of decoration that fought with the crystal chandelier overhead with neither being the victor. It was too small a room for decorations like this, but that was the point of a speakeasy. The colors were bright, too bright- that had always been the hue of the underworld: unearthly. An overcompensation for the hazards of the job. His hands were especially pale in comparison; his bright hair understated and mundane. That was why Matt didn't belong in places like this. He wasn't supposed to be washed out.

"Come with me," Mello crooned, taking him by the hands and pulling him to his feet. With his hands still around the man's wrist he headed for the stage. When no one was around that was where he liked to see Matt best. That was when Matt was the brightest. He was extraordinary all the time, Mello knew. But an extraordinary person in an extraordinary world was water disappearing into water and he knew that too intimately to deny it as fact. He would see Matt on the plain black stage. He would see Matt baptized in the tired white light. He would see him glow.

"Mello," Matt breathed, barely a sigh. They swayed through the hallway and Mello spread his arms as he ran up the stairs, spinning around to face Matt with an expectant grin. The boy was wearing the velvet blazer Mello recommended and underneath he was wearing the body God gave him… Mello slid his hands under the fabric, feeling the heave of the lungs that made his music. It was Matt's music more than his, but the selfish part of Mello wanted to claim it as his own.

"Matt," Mello echoed, pressing his lips to Matt's neck. The skin was soft there and he could feel Matt's throat tightening, the muscles aligning like some great seismic event. "Matt, you did well tonight. You can stay a little longer. Stay longer with me. I get to keep you even longer-"

"Keep me?" his voice was low, scratchy.

"Keep you," Mello flirted, lips moving upwards as his fingers played with stubborn buttons. And this was when he met Matt's gaze for the first time in the entirety of the evening.

"You're drunk, Mello," he said with a sudden bluntness. And then Mello saw his own shimmering image in Matt's eyes; he met his own eyes there. Without knowing why he shrunk back. It wasn't Matt, he didn't think- it was him. He'd caught himself off guard.

"No, but I could be," Mello purred, trying to right himself, "just as long as I'm with you." With ferocity he grabbed at the buttons on Matt's velvet blazer, soft and royal blue as the warmth of Matt's stare when it was at its best. He couldn't stand this different look- this spotlight scrutiny- but he didn't fear it. A look like that only meant it was showtime. A look like that-

"You won't be. Not tonight."

Mello stood dumbfounded as Matt retreated into the darkness until he was nothing but a match struck by the side door, a flaring cigarette and then nothing at all. Or maybe it was the other way around. As the door swung shut Mello was nothing more than an idea, an intuition, a specter in the anxious moonlight.

The room was spinning.

 **II.**

The best thing about Matt was that he sang when no one was listening. Mello wished he could fall asleep to its smoky somnolence but Mello didn't sleep- he simply became unconscious. That was alcohol's effect: too much and it was instant, dreamless, whole and complete. Mello thought too much. Rod Ross had told him he was a genius, so it didn't hurt to turn some of those thoughts off. If he was a genius he had plenty to spare.

Matt wrote all of his own music- lullabies that could make a person want to dance and saxophone tunes that moaned like elegies. Mello wanted a song written for him but he would settle for having a performance just for him- one that wasn't forced, wasn't threatened out of him. And maybe Matt didn't know or maybe he did, but late at night Mello liked to sit outside his dressing room door as the man packed away the rest of his things. He liked to listen for the songs.

He let it slip that he was in on the secret only once. The two of them were sitting on the ridiculous sofa. The next act was onstage- a pianist. A trombonist, too? A woman was laughing. Somebody dropped a glass and it shattered on the floor. That in and of itself was an instrument. And Mello was supposed to be outside, with the others. Rod was outside with the others. Out there, there was money changing hands, illegal champagne fizzing in glasses- the good stuff, saved away in cellars and kept for years only for the rich to waste it now. And in here Matt was lighting another cigarette, letting it hang trapped and static between the floor and the low ceiling. He sat on the sofa and Mello was perched on its arm, legs stretching out over the musician's.

"You smoke too much," Mello decided.

"That's a bit of a logical jump," Matt rebutted with a wry smile. "That implies there's an exact right amount to smoke. Let me know when you figure that out, yeah? And until then-"

"I just wouldn't want you to ruin your voice."

Matt stared up at him, incredulous.

"My what?"

"You heard me," Mello teased, snatching the cigarette from his hand. Before Matt could protest he flounced away to the opposite couch, taking a long, exaggerated drag as he met his companion's eyes with a note of playful rebellion.

"No. No, I don't think I did. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play dumb, Matty," Mello replied with a genuine smile- wide and innocuous. "It isn't a very fun game."

 **III.**

Matt was the first one to say I love you.

He didn't so much as say it as he did sing it, and he didn't even do that. But Mello saw it for the first time a few months after Rod Ross dragged his skinny ass into Mello's speakeasy for a chance at the kind of fame nobody could really give him. He saw it in the bodies swaying together as Matt played, hands wrapping around necks, heads laying on chests. And Mello swayed along alone in the tiny moments he got to call his own. It seemed nothing belonged to him- not the speakeasy (since that was really Rod's) not the outfit he wore (because even that was a gift) and he supposed this was the American daydream because it hadn't reached quite the level of fantasy Lady Liberty was selling. Matt made eye contact with him. Matt looked for him after the show. Nothing belonged to Mello. But this, this did.

Even if it didn't, that was a nicer thing to pretend than usual.

Mello was the first one to actually say it. They lay on the stage with their legs dangling over the sides, moonlight adoring their naked forms. Matt said he was going home (and they both knew what home meant- to Rod's car, to wherever the hell kind of one bedroom purgatory the crime family afforded him). Matt said he was tired. And then, Mello said, "I love you."

"You don't," Matt replied, and he wasn't sad, but wistful.

"Of course I do," Mello complained, nudging Matt with his cold bare foot. He scooted in closer and the two of them remained that way in silence for the next several minutes- not embracing, but touching. Matt had always been pale but he looked more than that in the moonlight- clean and purified. The light only gave his hair more color, and Mello was struck with the odd sensation that the boy was glowing. "Be logical, Mail. As if I'd take you from Rod if I didn't really love you. As if I'd risk losing everything to fuck-"

"A man?" Matt asked, tracing a gentle finger along the soft space between Mello's thumb and forefinger. "But if you don't consider yourself a man, if you're not a man, I don't see how that makes you a…" he smiled ruefully, not without humor. "Ahomosexual. A cake-eater. As Rod would say."

"Fuck Rod," Mello said, with such sudden viciousness that Matt jerked beside him.

Tense seconds passed. "Not him too," Matt joked eventually, letting out a devilish little laugh. "Isn't it bad enough you're already fucking me?"

"I love you," Mello repeated.

Matt turned his face from Mello, who could hardly complain at the sweet scent of Matt's hair. Moving forwards, he nuzzled the soft strands, letting his eyes flutter shut as he took in the man's warm presence. Ordinarily Matt was cold but sweat still clung to him from the show and the sex and the hot stage lights. His bare chest twitched with every violent heartbeat. What did he have to be afraid of? If it was the same thing that Mello feared he should stop lying down, get up, and start running.

"Do you love running this speakeasy?" Matt asked slowly. "Do you love being Rod's number one? Do you love the music and the money? Do you love how far you've come? Do you love this place you've made?"

"Yes," Mello answered without hesitation, smiling in satisfaction as he felt Matt's voice reverberate through his torso. He couldn't pull Matt close enough. There in the darkness they could never be close enough because with no one around to see them it wasn't a show anymore; he didn't have to act. The club was closed and no one was performing.

Matt pulled away. "Then you don't love me. Not the way anyone should be loved."

 **IV.**

Some people drank to get drunk. Some people liked that- the spectacle. Some people didn't want to live inside their bodies. Some would rather be a caricature, a protagonist, a metaphor, a fantasy. Being more than real wasn't being real at all. But not everyone who drank was quite like that. Some were even worse.

Vodka was better coming back up, if you drank it for the burn.


End file.
